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Description

Dashboards are the graphical interface that manipulate and present data about students’ learning behaviours (attendance, visits to the library, which books they take out, their attainment etc). Although only a few UK HEIs have developed a dashboard for students, most other UK HEIs have an aspiration to develop their use (Sclater 2014). Research into use of dashboards is in its early stages with some evidence of their positive impact on student engagement leading to improvements in student motivation, retention, satisfaction and attainment (Duval, Verbert, Klerkx, Govaerts, & Santos 2013; HEA 2014; Sclater 2014; UCISA 2015). However much of the focus for research is on the technical aspects of collecting and analysing data (Papamitsiou & Economides 2014) with little understood about how students respond to seeing data presented in this form (Duval et al 2013) and this is the gap that this paper aims to address.

The paper presents the emergent findings from a small scale study funded by Society for Research in Higher Education. The paper will focus on the design of dashboards and how students understood and interpreted the data that they presented. The type of dashboard elements that students valued and the ways that they responded to these elements will be described. The paper will suggest how Sutton’s (2012) three pillars of feedback literacy, knowing, becoming and acting, can be applied to understand the potential of dashboards for supporting students to become more effective learners.

The paper will be of particular interest anyone working in the area of learning analytics. It will also be of interest to academics who support students, and those working in cross institutional roles related to student engagement and student retention.

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